antique arms, armour & militaria - Thomas Del Mar

The PRINCESS CHARLOTTE was part of a small convoy of
East Indiamen that left the Downs for Portsmouth, en route
east, on 5th May 1796. At 9.30pm on 8th May, while
standing into St Helens at the east end of the Isle of Wight,
the ship struck hard on the long outcrop of rocks known as
the Mixon running south and south-west from Selsey Bill:
clearly, she was sailing far too close inshore. The Times of
10th May 1796 reported that, ‘the Princess Charlotte,
outward-bound East-India Ship, is on shore at Selsea Bill in
a dangerous situation.’ 48 hours of drama followed in
which the situation was not helped by the ship’s pilot
suffering, it was reported, a ‘mental derangement’: the
ship’s Journal suggests that it may have been this
‘derangement’ that had led to the ship sailing too far north.
The port admiral in Portsmouth sent two frigates to the
ship’s assistance and men arrived from Chichester and the
Isle of Wight in small boats, the shallow draught of which
allowed them to navigate the few channels of the Mixon at
high water in comparative safety. The ship’s Journal
records that Monday 9th May was spent in lightening the
ship by jettisoning shot and casks of the captain’s porter
and by manoeuvring her so that she might float at high
tide: this failed since when she became briefly free of the
rocks she promptly grounded again. During Tuesday 10th
May, her guns and some stores were unloaded into
launches and cutters alongside and her casks of drinking
water emptied. By 1am on Wednesday 11th May the ship
was free of the rocks and able to be towed through a
narrow channel known as the ‘Loo Stream’ into deep water:
although she had suffered damage, she was not in danger
of sinking. Alexander Williams, writing from Chichester to
the Court of Directors of the East India Company in London
on 11th May, said that the ship’s principal owner, Mestaer,
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who had left London together with the Company’s Master
Attendant as soon as news had been received of her
striking on the Mixon, had arrived, ‘...to meet the Ship in a
State of Safety and, afterwards, to see her conducted thro’
an intricate Channel which no Ship had ever passed
before...’.
Capable of being sailed into Portsmouth on 11th May, she
then went aground again, as The Times of 12th May
reported from Portsmouth,’ ...in coming into this
Harbour...she struck on the East side of the Channel and is
likely to receive further damage.’ Fortunately, this
grounding was only temporary and she was able to be
towed into the harbour that evening, being lashed to HMS
FORTITUDE (74) on 12th May for further unloading. After
lengthy negotiation between the East India Company’s
Portsmouth agent, Andrew Lindegren, and the Navy Board
– which administered the Dockyard for the Admiralty, the
ship was admitted to a Royal Navy dry-dock in the harbour
for repair on 18th May, where it was found that she had lost
all her false keel and the greater part of her main keel. The
ship was in dock until 5th June, after which she spent six
days refitting before mooring at Spithead on 11th June and
sailing east in convoy on 27th June 1796.
PRINCESS CHARLOTTE’s near-loss and subsequent repair
generated an unusual flurry of correspondence between
Portsmouth and the East India Company in London: sadly
little or none of this correspondence appears to have
survived. However, the Minutes of the meeting of the
Company’s Court of Directors of 5th July 1796 record,
‘Resolved that in consideration of the very great Attention
and Exertions of the Master Builder in His Majesty’s